GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet

A Penalty for All of Us

Another week, another death. On June 19, convicted killer and
marijuana smuggler Juan Raul Garza became the second person to be
executed by federal authorities in just over a week, following the
execution of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. Garza's was the 37th
execution this year (there were 85 in 2000 and a record 98 in 1999),
with three more slated for June and five in July.

They both died in the same padded chair, their life ended by
lethal injection.

Neither man deserves our sympathy. Both admitted their crimes and
their punishments should have been severe.

But not execution, which is nothing more than state-sanctioned
murder, revenge killing dressed up as something more noble, as
justice served.

I was unsure whether to write this column. I've hit this subject
so many times before that I was unsure I could bring something new to
it. But that's not the point.

There is nothing new that can be brought to the table, no argument
that can be made, no piece of information that has not been picked
over.

We know that capital punishment is unevenly administered, that
minorities and the poor are more likely to face death than whites and
that killers of white victims are more likely to be executed than
killers of minorities. We know that capital punishment does not act
as a deterrent to crime and we know that the potential exists that we
might kill an innocent man.

None of this is new.

But, again, that's not the point.

The point is that the death penalty makes murderers of us all. And
that's why I decided I needed to write this column.

I was troubled by the certainty that attended the McVeigh
execution on June 11, by the proclamations of justice and closure
made by the families and by politicians.

"The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have been given not
vengeance, but justice," President George W. Bush said after the
execution. "Today, every living person who was hurt by the evil done
in Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a
reckoning."

McVeigh's case should be simple. He admitted that he set the 1995
bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, killing 168 adults and children. The heinousness and scope of
his crime are so large they would seem to raise his execution above
any debates.

"Timothy McVeigh is probably the clearest example you can find,"
Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Washington Post in
May. "I see no reason why you shouldn't impose the death penalty on
Mr. McVeigh because there might be some debate about the penalty
generally."

Ashcroft told the Post that the administration supported
the death penalty, but would "remain open to arguments and
information and make sure that our justice system is fair."

"But when we have people who have committed heinous crimes, and
there's no question about their guilt, I don't know any reason to
suspend the imposition of an appropriate penalty," he said.

But who is to determine when there is "no question"? It is a
standard that is impossible to meet and, therefore, guaranteed to
exacerbate the system's current problems.

As Christopher Hitchens points out in The Nation, McVeigh's
admitted guilt does not raise him above the debate.

"It is not possible to be in favor of the death penalty a la
carte," he writes. "The state either claims the right to impose
this doom or it does not."

He goes on to say that "Subjective considerations about atrocity
and wickedness are what the judicial system exists to prevent, or at
the very least to contain."

Capital punishment is essentially nothing more than premeditated
murder, a revenge killing dressed up as a noble, cleansing act.
Simply put, when the state engages in capital punishment, when it
sets the date and takes a life, it is engaging in premeditated
murder.

French philosopher Albert Camus said in "Reflection on the
Guillotine" that the death penalty "adds to death a rule, a public
premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is
itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death." He
said that the death penalty is "the most premeditated of murders, to
which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For
there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a
criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would
inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had
confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not
encountered in private life."

To hand the state the gun and ask it to pull the trigger may make
us feel safer, may create the illusion that we are sending a message
that heinous, vicious acts will not be tolerated.

But in doing so, we, as a society, are dragged down to the level
of the Timothy McVeighs of the world. That's why I had to write this
column.

Hank Kalet is a poet and the managing editor of two New Jersey
weekly newspapers. E-mail hkalet@home.com.